Memorial Address
by lotuskasumi
Summary: How else could the Phantom have found a way to his heart, apart from following in the footsteps that centuries of war and doubt had already tread? 'Unless I was half crazy to begin with.' Hope x Lightning. (Stream of conscious psychological trauma. From a prompt on Tumblr: "Some hoperai phantom rose stuff? Cause i'm a masochist….")


Over the course of his long life of losing what he cherished the most, Hope often wondered what the difference was between being left behind and being the one who left. Surely there had to be pain on both sides, he reasoned. A regret shared by the opposing pairs, now irreparably detached...

Or was that merely a thought meant to comfort, rather than seriously convince? Hope wasn't sure, and he didn't know who to ask. Coping mechanisms were funny like that, in the sense that there was nothing funny at all about them. It was just too sad to watch someone fall back on that habit, however justifiable the habit was. Hope would only have to look at what Snow had become to understand that.

All that Hope could decide, on the nights when sleep would not come and dreams were kept at bitter bay, was that there were some thoughts too wretched for the mind to contain. Some memories are too dark and bitter to be endured, and some pain is too insistent to be denied.  
He thought about these words often as he looked into the eyes of his associates, his comrades, what remained of his friends. And so Hope's mind returned back to the starting question, the answer which eluded him since he was a child all those centuries ago on Cocoon: _what hurts more, being left behind or being the one who leaves?_

Hope looked again to what remained of his comrades for answers, and found only a despair too cruel to bear. Hope looked to his own life, and found that he would rather be blind: rarely had he left anyone behind. It was usually a matter of others leaving him.

And there was no one to blame for it besides rotten luck and circumstance, fates too monstrous for humans to bear.

_That and the Fal'Cie_, he'd argued once, but the word felt like a strange thing to say, all these years after those entities had fallen into disrepair. _All save Pandaemonium_... which was a name that only made Hope laugh and made others stare to hear him laugh so bitterly.

_"Pandaemonium - do you know what that means?"_ Hope had asked Snow once, hardly able to keep his laughter in check.

Snow had looked him over with eyes that had dimmed as dark as they could get, his expression tempered with unease. _"Got a feeling it's something bad,"_ he said, _"seeing how you're freaking out about it."_

_"'All Demons,'"_ Hope had said, shaking his head and putting one hand against the sudden ache in the front of his head, right above his eyes. It soon grew into a little crown of pain that constricted his bones and blood and made his teeth clench hard inside his jaw. _"To break it down further, it means 'every inferior divine power.'"_

_"Inferior to who?"_

_"Who knows,"_ Hope said. Though earlier on in his life, he might have said something different: _Us_. But such bold words would feel too much like a lie now.

Bias would tell Hope it hurt the most to be the one abandoned but he tried, however much in vain, to imagine the pain one might feel if they were ripped away from all that they loved. It wasn't purely a masochistic tendency, Hope reasoned, but a simple issue of trying to see both sides of a stark, horrid situation. He had to do a lot of that in the Conseil, and even before that, during his years climbing the ranks of the Academy. Hope's life seemed to be defined by a serious of steady ascents that brought him not to light - though it hurt to think the word - nor to knowledge or even truth, but to more questions and problems, their answers ever more elusive and vague.

Hope wondered if it was this little thought experiment that made it all happen - wondered if these thoughts cracked open a part of his heart and left room for fear and doubt to grow in full, and that gave the Phantom a way to bloom. _How else could it have gotten in otherwise?_ He worked so hard for so long, for so many people - but the strength to fight for himself never seemed to emerge as readily as it would for someone else.

How else could the Phantom have found a way to his heart, apart from following in the footsteps that centuries of war and doubt had tread?

_Unless I was already half crazy to begin with._ That seemed possible. But not probable. There was a difference, an important one - wasn't there?  
Hope didn't have an answer. He didn't know if he wanted one.

The thought experiment went as such: put yourself in the place of the abandoner, imagine everything that they must feel, and ask yourself again: which hurts more - being left behind or being the one who leaves? Imagine how agony would reign in those last, despairing moments of life; how bitterly would their hearts burn with the flames of regret and lament, watching everything they'd ever cherished be torn from their grasp, no matter how much of a fight they put up. Imagine every word they left unsaid would rot on their tongue forever more, until it became nothing but the merest speck of dust. Imagine every tear they had fought not to shed would overflow from eyes that would become like the cloudiest spheres of glass. No light, no life, no fires alive inside at all - just tears, just fog. Just the haze of death.

When this experiment was all said and done, Hope wanted to imagine that the pain he felt was close to the pain they all had felt, because it was comforting to think it wasn't easy to leave someone behind - that someone had been thinking of him in the end. _Is that selfish? Then I guess I'm selfish._ Even if the words had never been said, at least the memories were there, a tribute to the love they had found, shared, and lost.

_But never regretted_, he wished with a vague heart half cracked by fear. He had lived long enough at this point to know firsthand how easily regrets could creep in to tarnish what had once been cherished.

What he didn't know is if it also happened to those who left.

* * *

There had been no body to bury, and so the Estheims had to make do with the same as most other survivors of Cocoon's Fall: stark black markers with red text, listing the name of the deceased and the approximate date of death.

There had been plans for a single monument instead of thousands, but many voiced complaints at this idea. Their argument was simple: let there be as many markers for as many dead. Hope found himself agreeing with the idea, but with no need to speak it. His father was of the same mind, and did that for the both of them.

Soon debates raged about where to set up the memorial ground: close to Cocoon, and the nearest sites of the graves themselves, or somewhere far off, safer, distant, detached - a far-off place for both the living and the dead to seclude themselves to mourn and be remembered. The latter choice eventually became the reality. Hope sometimes wondered if it was because those who survived didn't want to be reminded of all the deaths that had to happen to ensure they would live.

_It's ridiculous,_ he often thought, and would sometimes say to the few dear friends who would listen. _You can't put something out of sight or mind._ But some people tried, and as the years passed Hope tried not to judge them. He didn't know he'd end up envying them.

Some people kept the grave markers inside their homes, in alcoves adorned with candles, photographs, and other trinkets for the deceased and dearly beloved. The Estheims weren't one of them, and they made a weekly pilgrimage out to the memorial grounds to pay their respects to Nora.

They didn't often say anything on these trips, either to each other or to Nora, what remained of her. They had flowers, and sometimes there were tears, but mostly there was nothing but a shared silence and the howling of the wind along the wide, flat plain of Pulse. The dust made Hope's eyes sting more often than not, and it filled his throat with arid, choking clouds that robbed him of all the words he might have said.

Once and once only, towards the end of his father's life, Bartholomew Estheim said, "She would have been proud of you, Hope." And Hope believed him, because he'd wanted it to be true.

"They're all proud of you," he would later tell himself when the years became harder to endure and the silence from those who'd gone tormented those who'd had to stay behind. "Mom and Fang and Vanille... and Light, too. They're all proud. They know you're working hard to keep it all together."

But like most words meant to comfort and not fully convince they became little more than hollow husks, all feeling gone, all heart lost. Just empty words spoken by an empty man, meant to fill the silence with fading echoes.

At least, until the Phantom arrived.

* * *

It started with a dream of a familiar memorial ground, all those stark black markers coated in blood red ink. Only in the dream, the markers had one name written on their coal-black front, and only one cause of death listed: _Claire Farron, Lost. Lost, lost, lost._

But lost wasn't the same as dead. It couldn't be - it couldn't. He wouldn't let it.

"You have no power over that, and you know it. Lost is as good as dead. Accept it."

Hope's heart ached more at the sound of that voice than at the words they'd said. He thought he'd forgotten its power over him, after all the long years of having only heard it inside the echoes of memories. He dreaded the day when he might forget it - and came close to hating that he never could. It was an irrational clash of thoughts that rent the heart further in two, and the more this part of him tore the more the voice spoke from the dark depths of every aching thought.

"You've always wondered what it's like from this side, right? Well, here's your chance to try it. We can get lost together, you know. As long as we're together it won't be so bad."

"I'm not so sure about that."

The Phantom's voice laughed and the very sound made Hope's blood run cold. He'd only ever heard the original let out weak, sarcastic little chuckles and never anything more sincere than that. This laughter, however, was something approaching genuine - and it was a horrible sound, little different than how Hope had laughed at Pandaemonium's appearance.

"Of course you aren't sure," the Phantom said, and as she spoke she began to take form - the lips appeared first, smiling as she mouthed every awful word. The eyes came after that, and looked just as he remembered them, bright and shining and as clear as the sky hanging over his head, a sky they'd once shared. "You've only ever known what it's like to be on _this_ side of loss. And now here's your chance to be on the other, and you're too scared to say yes."

"I'm not afraid," Hope had argued, but the words were as hollow as all his attempts to comfort himself over the years. _They're proud of you, they're all proud - they know you're working hard and they don't want you to give up._

_She misses you, too. She misses you just as much as you miss her._

_She'll never forget you - so you had better do the same._

"Then prove it to me," the Phantom said, appearing in full at these words. Her long, thin arms were extended as if to embrace him, and Hope watched with a fascination fast approaching mute awe as she out a hand meant for Hope to take. Her hair was as pale rose and shimmering bright as he remembered it to be, falling around her face like a curtain that so often hid the changes in her expression, shifts of thought that might otherwise go ignored. Her hair swayed in the breeze on the wide, long plain the living had flattened out to house the dead, and when her scent carried over to Hope he smelled only ash and dust. The remnants of regret.

Hope had tried to reach for her hand, only to find that just as his fingers reached hers, they evaporated into fog. He took a step back, and then another, telling himself he wasn't afraid as the Phantom appeared again, smiling, holding out both hands this time, as if they hadn't failed the first.

"Prove it to me, Hope," she said, taunting him now, smiling as wide as her mouth could go and he could hear every mocking laughter inside the words, echoing further back inside his head until it darkened every small trace of hope he might have carried inside. "Show me you're not afraid."

For weeks he would wake up before he could. How bitter those days were! How leaden-low was every hour made, anchored with regret and frustration for all that he could have accomplished had he been a little faster, a little braver, and so unlike himself.

_I could've done something - anything. Anything at all would be better than nothing. I said I would keep her safe and I'd never wanted anything more, and never failed at anything but._

The Phantom returned again and again, holding out her hands. Again and again Hope tried to grasp them, to reach out and take her in his arms and pull her close. Again and again he failed, sometimes waking in tears, other times laughter like a mad echo of fear.

He dreamed of losing Light in the Whitewood, watching helplessly as PSICOM gunned her down and dragged him off for a more public execution, it wasn't until he had grit his teeth and forced himself to replay the memories of what _truly_ happened did Hope remember they'd both made it out of Gapra alive, in tact, as partners instead of pieces of broken souls. Hope told himself this didn't scare him. He was just working too hard, staying up too late, not getting enough sleep - but soon these excuses became as hollow as every mantra of comfort, and he stopped making them.

He dreamed that Light had died in Palumpolum before he could ever give back her knife, before he could ever make his promise to keep her just as safe as she wanted him to be. And it wasn't until he asked Snow about that awful day did Hope remember how it had truly happened, because the memory wasn't playing back as it ought to have done. Even then he wasn't afraid.

"You alright, kid?" Snow had asked afterwards, just as Hope was planning to leave.

Hope wanted to say yes. He wanted to say no. He wanted to say something, anything, anything at all, even if it was a lie to the one person left who deserved nothing but the truth. But he ended up leaving before the words came, and it was the last he'd ever see of Snow for some time. A gulf of silence and dead words stretched between them where there had once been a bond beyond blood, deeper than any Fal'Cie forced brand. In a way, it was no different than what separated him from Light. The only difference was both men were alive and breathing - if you could even call it that.

He dreamed that Light had died on Pulse when Alexander appeared, tearing out of his grief and the awful ache of the brand and towering over them all, a sentinel not of comfort but despair. _This is _not_ an ordeal!_ Light had cried, turning to glare at him, as if her stare could drive the words in deeper. _This is a _gift_!_ But she had fallen beneath the eidolon's grasp, flattened into the earth that trembled with every monstrous step, and Hope could not understand how he could agree with her last command.

_How am I supposed to see this thing as a gift after what it did?_

It took Hope a very long time to remember how that fight had really ended, and even then he wasn't quite sure which memory deserved his attention. Both felt so true and so real, because they both hurt to the same excruciating degree. How could something fake hurt so much? It had to be real. Hope couldn't understand how a lie could cut so deep.

These dreams only stopped on the night Hope took the Phantom's hand, acting not out of bravery or awe or frustration, but a desperation that made his heart crack completely through. And when the Phantom closed her hands over his, and she smiled that wretchedly bright smile, Hope knew he ought to have been afraid. But all he felt was relief.

_Is this how the dead feel? The ones who leave us behind?_

_Of course it is_, the Phantom said. _See? It's not so bad, is it? What were you so afraid of?_

But somewhere inside of Hope's torn out heart, a memory cried out using the same voice as this specter. _I will _not_ abandon you._

Will not, would not, _could_ not - but did.

And that, at last, made him afraid.


End file.
